San Francisco & Santa Cruz

Down the mountain, through a tunnel and there before us was the brilliant orange of the Golden Gate Bridge. We drove across it then followed our not so great GPS through a bit of a spaghetti junction before eventually finding the vista point for the bridge, which was jammed up with buses and tourists like ourselves.

Finding a park down the road a bit, we took advantage of our bikes on board and went for a wee self guided pedal across the bridge, navigating our way through hundreds of people and fellow cyclists (most of whom struggled at riding slowly and wiggled all over the path in an unpredictable pattern and hence causing slight chaos).

Looking out across San Fran bay, overlooking Alcatras Island, we decided to leave the van where it was and bike into the city instead, following the waterfront the whole way.

There are still strong remnants of the America's Cup, I was hoping that we would be able to see the boats still docked, however they were long gone, with our boat probably sunk to the bottom of the bay.
Getting a taste of the city, grabbing a bite to eat surrounded by English cruise boat passengers, we decided to continue on our journey south to Santa Cruz and try and find some waves.

The Californian sun was delivering a stunner of a day, but we stayed away from the coastal route for the hour long journey as the beach side HWY-1 is quite similar to the back road to Kaiteriteri, and after travelling that path for way too many hours in the days before we just wanted to get to our destination.

Santa Cruz is very much like other surf towns I've been too, like Byron Bay in Australia and Tarifa in Spain, they all have the same feel about them. The amount of surfers in the water was crazy, looking out it looked like a large seal colony playing in the water.
The waves were great and I could feel Kellys excitement building at the thought of getting out there, however with no surfboard or wetsuit handy, plus rolling into town late, it was going to have to wait one more day.
We got chatting to a dude called Matt, who was a local, and filled us in on good places to find a good break to surf, Kelly & Matt exchanged numbers as Matt was gonna go for a surf and he was willing to show us where.

Delighted to come across a gorgeous whippet, the dog I have my heart set on getting some day soon, look at her skinny little face, awwwww......

We then met up with some of Kellys riding buddies, and they rode the last hour of daylight at some dirt jumps.

Both desperate for a shower, to the point where when Kelly asked me 'Do I smell?' my response was 'I just don't know anymore'.
Back to Kellys mate A.T's place, a hot shower awaited us, and delighted with our fresh scents we went out for a mean feed and called it a night.

Surfing was the goal of the following day, there was crazy thick fog though and it was pretty chilly so I wasn't so keen, but we met up with Matt and they headed out, I lost sight of them pretty quick so got myself a coffee and tried to make a plan of how I'm going to take over the world in 2014.
When the boys came back out, the sun was beginning to break through and things started to warm up so my inclination to get out there amongst the seaweed forest was increasing.
After another coffee, I got up the guts to suit up and get amongst it!!

The initial icicles to the ankles turned numb and my focus was now on avoiding touching the gross seaweed and also keeping out of the way of the other seal looking humans out in the ocean.
The amount of wildlife out with us was awesome, there were dolphins, seals, sea-birds & fish, think I was more excited about seeing them pop up than catching waves!

With so many people in the water trying to catch the same waves, and with me being right on the outside it was tough for me to find a wave to have a go at but i'm pleased to say that I caught one and rode it for ages.
Things got really quiet after that bit of excitement, so it wasn't long before I headed back into shore.

4 of the local pro-riders, Cam & Tyler McCaul, R-Dogg & Greg Watts along with Kelly went for a pre-rampage ride on a local DH trail and I got job of shuttle driver, and along with that I unintentionally fell in love with the Toyota Tundra ute I was driving, they just don't make utes this big in NZ and I would love one if the petrol wasn't so expensive back home.
After 5 or 6 runs, we headed back to the ranch, so another hot shower (making the most of the opportunities), and planning our next move for our travels.

Originally we had planned on going to LA, but we are enjoying our time in Santa Cruz, we need to be in the desert by Saturday night, so we might just cruise down to Santa Barbara to see some friends then head straight over.

We're just taking it as it comes now that we are here in Cali, which is fine by me, I'm very much looking forward to getting my heels dug in to Zion National Park in a few days, I only cracked the surface of it last year and there is so much more to explore.
Plus I just got word that Libby is now coming to watch Rampage, so will not only have the wonderful Traharn to hang with but also Libby, and that means conversations and interaction with human beings (bonus being of the female kind) with something other than mountain biking, yussss!!!

Oregon & Northern Californian Coast

The remnants of the typhoon were predicted to batter the Oregon Coast, and well, it delivered.....

We got to the coast where we camped at Cannon Beach, made famous as the beach on the movie 'The Goonies'!!!!

Poured rain all night, didn't get much sleep, plus the gap in the back door seal that we had been saying 'We had better seal that up at some stage' about for the past few weeks, began to leak.
We decided the best thing to do was just to drive and hope that the rain & wind would let up, it didn't, so for about 12 hrs we drove in torrential rain and super strong winds that at point we could see was blowing the rain faster than we were driving.
We stopped a few times along the way to get photos of the angry seas bashing the coast and also had to say hi to the T-Rex & Brontosaurus that were hanging out on the side of the road.

We drove the entire Oregon coast in a day, crossed into California where surely it 'never rains in sunny California', made an attempt at fixing the gap in the seal and then made camp for the night.
Delighted at waking to the sweet sound of waves and looking out into a bluebird sunny day, our next destination was 'Avenue of the Giants'.
Avenue of the Giants is a protected forest of giant Redwood trees, and they really were GIANTS! Standing mostly around 300ft tall and about 20ft wide, some of these trees have been around for thousands of years and it was incredible to think of all the moments in history that have occurred in the world while they have just hung out there in the forest.
Something very cool that we did, not only once but twice, was we drove/squeezed our van through a tree!!!

 

The day was just gorgeous and the more south we went, the more layers of clothing came off and eventually we were very stoked to be in shorts and singlets again!
The road from the giants eventually brought us back to the coast, and the effects from the storms meant surf was up and Kelly was frothing to find a surf town and hopefully get out into the water.
However, the Northern Californian coast was a lot different to what we expected...
Thinking that this state must be quite populated, we were surprised how barren the coast was. There were only a couple of hick towns along the way, with populations barely into the hundreds, and finding a place that looked half decent to get something to eat was a mission!! But more devastatingly, there were NO surf shops anywhere to be found, the first one we found was just North of San Francisco but by he time we got there it was closed.

The weather was amazing though and the views of the coast were just stunning, including the stunning view of my first Californian sunset.
There is something totally different to this sunset that I don't ever remember seeing before, it was like out of a movie, where the sun looks ginormous and you can see the complete outline of it the whole time, so beautiful.

We made camp about 10 miles out of San Fran on the top of a big mountain overlooking the city, although with the San Fran fog, there was no city to be seen the next morning.

Today we head into San Fran city, I'm really looking forward to this as I missed out on this last year due to our van 'Ronnie B' breaking down and cutting our trip short.